The Fall Of White City (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 1)
Read The Fall Of White City (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 1) Online
Authors: N. S. Wikarski
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THE FALL OF WHITE CITY
by
N. S. Wikarski
The Fall Of White City
Book One—Gilded Age Mystery Series
Copyright © 2011 by N. S. Wikarski
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Justice is always Violence to the party offending!
For every man is innocent in his own eyes.
--Daniel Defoe
The Shortest-Way With the Dissenters
Chapter 1 – The Heiress And The Seamstress
Chapter 3 – Anarchy’s Red Hand
Chapter 6 – The Mast House Inquisition
Chapter 7 – The Accountant’s Lair
Chapter 8 – Of Barristers, Bards,
and Barrooms
Chapter 9 – Her Majesty,
The Queen Of Chicago
Chapter 10 – In The Grand Manor
Chapter 13 – The Fabric Of Truth
Chapter 15 – Of Roses And Thorns
Chapter 16 – The Edge Of The Bluff
Chapter 20 – A Chat With Mother
Chapter 22 – The New Jerusalem
Chapter 23 – Of Swan Boats And Vice
Chapter 1
—The Heiress And The Seamstress
October, 1893
“Freddie! Freddie! Wake up!” a voice demanded out of the darkness. The words were punctuated by the clatter of stone against glass. A faint drizzle fell as the residents of Shore Cliff slept content. All, that is, except Evangeline LeClair, who was standing on the lawn of Freddie Simpson’s house throwing rocks at a second-story window.
“Freddie! Do wake up,” the voice insisted. “Have you gone deaf? Half the village must be up by now!”
Dodging a fresh volley of pebbles, the lucky object of all this attention craned his head out of the besieged window. He leaned over the sill, squinting through the mist to identify his attacker. Recognition dawned, since the sun wasn’t ready to oblige him. “
Engie
?
Engie
, is that you,” he gasped. “For God’s sake, what are you doing?”
“I’m attempting to raise the dead,” the lady replied succinctly from below.
“I won’t make the mistake of asking if you know what time it is!” Freddie knew from sad experience that Evangeline’s motives for doing anything, like the will of God, were frequently obscure.
“I’m well aware of the time. It’s precisely six o’clock in the morning, and I need you to go to the city with me today.”
“What on earth—”
Evangeline cut in, “Come to my house at eight. We’ll take the late commuter train. It’s a very serious matter.”
Freddie could barely hear her next words. He could have sworn the wind shaking in the treetops distorted the sound.
“We have a funeral to attend. A friend of mine has been murdered.” Leaving the young man to collect his wits as best he might, she turned and melted into the fog.
***
In defiance of Evangeline’s implied assumption that he needed two hours to get ready, Freddie was washed and combed by quarter to eight. He wore a black suit, a newly starched shirt, and a thoroughly brushed bowler as he slipped noiselessly out of the back door before his mother could ask where he was going. He darted past street after street of Italianate villas, their barbered hedges exuding propriety. Shore Cliff had become the summer retreat of the wealthy who chose its lake breezes over the swelter of
Chicago
in July. The village had been described by many as “charming.” Freddie thought this description would have been a mystery to anyone who had never used the word “charming” as an adjective to modify “monotony.”
When he rounded the corner to Evangeline’s house, the young man found she was already waiting for him—umbrella in hand, tapping her foot impatiently on the front porch. Without a word, the two turned down
Center Street
in the direction of the train. The drizzle and fog of early morning hadn’t relented. Freddie stole a sideways glance at the tiny woman walking beside him. She stood barely five feet tall, though Freddie believed she seemed a good deal taller when she was angry. As a
débutante
, she had been a celebrated beauty. Her dark eyes formed a striking contrast to a complexion just pallid enough to be fashionable. Though still a celebrated beauty, she was now in her mid-thirties, which meant she was past her prime as a great matrimonial prize. It also meant that she would henceforth be described in hushed tones by polite society as “a lady of a certain age.”
While Evangeline viewed Freddie as a younger brother, his feelings for her fell into the romantic category. It had been love at first sight. He was seven at the time, and she had run him off her lawn for assaulting sparrows with a slingshot. The eight-year age difference didn’t bother him at all, though he doubted that Evangeline would ever seriously consider being
chafed
by the bonds of matrimony. She had inherited a fortune when her parents passed away. This stroke of good luck had aggravated her already strange notions of female liberty. She seemed content to donate her time as a teacher at Mast House, tend her garden, correspond with her friends, attend society functions, entertain a few remaining suitors, and make Freddie miserable. By her own reckoning, she lived quite a satisfying life. Freddie knew her too well to cherish much hope that she would ever change. Still, he found whatever pretext he could to be near her, even at the price of having rocks thrown at his window in the gray light of dawn.
Since Evangeline continued mute, Freddie broached the topic uppermost in his mind. “Well, are you ready to tell me what this is about?”
At his words, Evangeline’s composure seemed to wilt. Her usual bravado was replaced by a look of deep gloom.
“I hardly know any way to discuss it at all, so I’ll begin abruptly—a very bad business. It still seems too shocking to be real.”
Freddie’s concern escalated to alarm. “What do you mean? Is it anyone I know?”
“Not someone you know, but someone I’m sure you’ve read about.”
Freddie’s mind began to race. “But if she was murdered, then it would have been in all the papers. I can’t recollect... Good Lord,
Engie
, not the girl at the Templar House!”
Evangeline’s face had drained of color. “As I said, a very bad business, Freddie. She was only twenty. I had just seen her the night before at Mast House. She sat through one of my literature classes. And the next night, dead... To die in such a way, too.” Evangeline seemed unable to comprehend the finality of it all. “How much have you heard?”
“Just what I read in the
Gazette
the morning after it happened. Twenty-four-point Roman headline, two-column spread, ‘Girl Found Murdered in Downtown Hotel.’” Even while discussing such a grim topic, Freddie couldn’t tear himself away from his enthusiasm for all matters journalistic.
“Bear in mind that you are an attorney, please, and not a reporter as you might wish. What, besides the typestyle, do you remember?”
Freddie looked off into space, thinking back. “Her name was German... Elsa... something beginning with a ‘B’... Bremen...
Bauhof
... Oh yes, now I have it. It was Bauer, Elsa Bauer.”
Evangeline nodded.
“It must have created quite a stir for the hotel! With all the rich foreign clientele staying there while the World’s Fair is going on, Potter Templar must be beside himself to have that kind of notoriety for his establishment.”
“And
Berthe
Templar, too, I expect. You know, in private conversation, she always refers to the hotel as ‘our house.’ Quite a blow for the first lady of
Chicago
society.”
“Yes, it will be fairly hard for Templar’s palace to live down something like this. A young woman, traveling alone, checks in quietly on the night of October seventh. The next morning when the maid comes in to make up the room, she’s found lying on the floor dead.”
By this time they had reached the tracks, and their conversation was interrupted by the sound of a whistle as the train rounded the final bend and came into view of the station. The two boarded in the persistent drizzle, Freddie complaining that Evangeline was trying to poke his eye out with the spokes of her umbrella. Their only companions were a few businessmen taking the late train to the city. It wasn’t until after the couple claimed their seats and got settled that their discussion of Elsa Bauer continued.
“Do you remember any details of how she died?” Evangeline spared herself the need to recount the story.
Freddie thought for a moment. “I remember reading that the doctor who examined the body discovered a stab wound in her back. Conveniently for the murderer, no knife was found at the scene of the crime.”
Evangeline nodded absently, glancing out the window. “But why was she there at all, Freddie? The Templar House is the most high-toned hotel in the city. Even the floor of the hotel barbershop is inlaid with silver dollars. Elsa worked as a seamstress in one of the sweatshops on
South Ashland Avenue
. A room at the hotel would have cost her at least a week’s wages—a week’s wages she could ill afford to part with. I’m sure her landlady would have been highly displeased not to receive her rent and would, no doubt, have expressed that disapproval by throwing Elsa out into the street.”
Freddie cleared his throat nervously, afraid to mention a subject that Evangeline was sure to find offensive. “Well, if she was a pretty girl, there’s always the other possibility...”
Evangeline turned from the window to focus her unblinking attention on her friend. “And what possibility would that be?”
Freddie looked down, finding a speck of something on the knee of his pants leg to be intensely interesting. “That she was involved in a private arrangement with some man, and that he paid for the room.”
“You needn’t worry about distressing my maiden ears with that news, Freddie. Of course the possibility presented itself to me as well. I find it difficult to credit for several reasons. First, I knew Elsa. She wasn’t the sort of girl who would settle for a questionable affair—far too serious-minded for that. And if the affair was clandestine, why would she have reserved a room at the hotel using her real name? Besides, when and how would she ever have come into contact with a man who could afford an expensive liaison? She and her brother Franz board with an Irish family in the factory district. I once asked her if she had ever gone downtown. She looked at me blankly as if I were referring to a trip to the Orient. It’s only ten blocks north of her home, but she’s never ventured out of her own neighborhood—only to the Mast House settlement for classes, the factory where she worked, and her church. Now, unless it’s become the fashion for well-bred gentlemen to take their evening promenades down
Maxwell Street
, she would have as much chance of meeting such a person in her neighborhood as she would of becoming Queen of England.”
Freddie scratched his head in bewilderment, acknowledging the logic of her argument. “Well, it does seem odd. But once the killer is caught, all these questions can be resolved. I’m sure the Templars will put pressure on the police to make an arrest quickly.”
“I’m sure they will. But I wonder if the need to make a quick arrest will outweigh the need to make the right arrest.”
“That’s out of your hands,
Engie
.”
“So it would seem, Freddie. So it would seem.”
The two sat in silence for some moments before another thought struck Freddie. “Why is this one so important to you that you would commandeer me and travel thirty-five miles for a burial? She was just a student of yours. You must teach twenty just like her in any given class.”
“No, not just like her, Freddie.” Evangeline’s face lightened briefly at the memory. “She was different. She had a fierce determination to make a better life for herself. I admired her spirit. I can still
remem
er
the day she came rushing into class after I had lent her my copy of Emerson’s essays. She began quoting ‘Self-Reliance’—to me, of all people. I saw a glimmer of something like defiance in her eyes when she repeated his words: ‘The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul.’ How many seamstresses would have understood what that line meant, much less remembered it?”
“So she was a test case for your experiment in cultural enrichment?” Freddie observed dryly.
“Not cultural enrichment! The cultural enrichment was only a means to an end. It improved her reading. With that, in turn, she could have applied for a clerical position in an office somewhere. Her pay would have tripled. Materially, her life would have been better. Do you consider it a pointless gesture to have given her a book to read? Books fired her imagination, taught her not to accept her lot in life as inevitable!”
Evangeline stopped abruptly and turned to the window again. Neither one spoke for several minutes until Freddie broke the silence. “I wonder if it was those very aspirations that ended up getting her killed.”
Without turning toward him, Evangeline smiled grimly.
“Yes, I just had the same thought, too.”